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"OpenStax College, the year-old Rice University startup that produces free online textbooks, will more than double the number of fields in which it has titles by 2015, the university announced today. A grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation will allow OpenStax College to add to its current offerings in physics and sociology, and its two new biology books and an introductory anatomy text coming out this fall. The new titles will be in precalculus, chemistry, economics, U.S. history, psychology and statistics, Rice said, toward its goal of producing high-quality open-source books in the 25 most-enrolled college courses. OpenStax says its existing two texts have been downloaded more than 70,000 times so far."

Baraniuk said OpenStax College's print edition prices are already exceptionally low - about $30-$54. He said the NACS agreement will allow OpenStax College to lower prices by about 2 percent next year. Beyond the per-copy drop in prices, Baraniuk said the NACS agreement will also save students money by reducing how much OpenStax College has to pay for shipping.

Students could use some financial relief. According to an American Enterprise Institute analysis, the cost of textbooks has risen 812% since 1978, compared with a 250% increase in the consumer price index. As a point of reference, medical costs (often described as "spiraling out of control") are up 575% in the same period, according to AEI. The burden is significant enough that 7 in 10 students say they have skipped buying a textbook for a course, trying to make do without it because of the cost. OpenStax adopted a conventional editorial process because that was required to win acceptance in academia, Baraniuk said, but the books are still published in the same modular fashion. That means instructors have the option of creating their own versions, perhaps introducing their own edits or swapping in content from a different source, and assigning that remix. At last count, there were 41 altered versions of OpenStax Physics available in the Connexions repository.

Presented by senators Walker Byrd and Justin Mathews, the proposal would provide students with free or inexpensive "open textbooks" through a nonprofit organization, OpenStax, based out of Rice University. "We as students should have purchasing power of the books we buy, but we don't," Byrd said. "The professors require a book and often times you have no control over how much that book is going to be."

"With OpenNow, Cengage is sending its clearest signal yet that it is serious about OER. Taking OER materials freely available online from sites such as OpenStax, Cengage has added its own assessments, content and technology to the materials, which will be delivered through an "intuitive, outcomes-based" platform that can be integrated into students' learning management systems. Focusing on general education, OpenNow has launched with courses in psychology, American government and sociology, and more courses in science, economics and the humanities will be available this fall."

"The average cost for a textbook bundle in the report sample was $157, versus $134 for a new textbook from the college bookstore or $56 for a used textbook from Amazon. The report calculated that by switching from publisher textbooks to open educational resources from organizations like OpenStax, the 40 colleges in the sample could save students up to $13 million per semester for these 10 courses."

" it makes sense for Wiley (the publisher, not the dude) to strike a licensing deal with OpenStax. They're OK about not making a lot of money on the books as long as they can sell their WileyPlus software. Which, in turn, is why I think that Wiley (the dude, not the publisher) is not crazy at all when he predicts that "80% of all US general education courses will be using OER instead of publisher materials by 2018." I won't be as bold as he is to pick a number, but I think he could very well be directionally correct. I think many of the larger publishers hope to be winding down their traditional textbook businesses by 2018."

The college, with the cooperation of faculty and students, made a move toward using OERs. The two-year project began in April 2012 and is supported by student technology fees. The goal was to embed OERs into the 10 classes with the highest enrollments and to save students $250,000. A year later, 39 sections of 19 individual classes-from biology, to English, to computer courses-use digital materials rather than traditional textbooks. Faculty isn't required to participate, but the number of teachers using OERs is growing. To date, the college has saved students $266,000.